The City of London's role as a global financial centre was safe despite doomsday scenarios around the impact of the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, according to one of Prime Minister Theresa May's senior ministers.

Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said on Tuesday the city's wealth of talent, as well as its regulatory standards and global positioning, made it unique.

"London will remain," he told the Australian Financial Review.

"At that is because we have an ecosystem which includes the credibility of the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] and the regulatory environment; you have the reputation of the Bank of England; and you've got, perhaps most importantly, phenomenally large professional infrastructure.

"None of those things can be replicated elsewhere, and certainly not in any short space of time," he said.

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His comments, which came at the start of a three-day visit to discuss trade and security with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and senior ministers, are not surprising for a high-profile campaigner for leaving the EU.

However, Mr Fox has support from unlikely quarters: former World Trade Organisation head Pascal Lamy agrees fears for the future of London as a financial hub may be overblown.

"I think London will remain a major financial centre because there is a sort of eco-system around finance, banking, insurance, which is there, " he told London's Express newspaper on Tuesday (AEDT).

Martin Shanahan, who heads Ireland's IDA inward investment agency, also said on a visit to Australia last month that London would not be replaced as Europe's premier financial hub.

"Our view is that the City of London isn't going to decamp to anywhere," he told the AFR.

Mr Fox said on Tuesday the expansion of digital networks and the rapidly changing nature of advanced economies were eroding the benefits of physical proximity to trading partners.

"For mature economies where services are their basic sell, it doesn't matter geographically about being close to your market," he said.

"Our trade with the European Union in 2005 was 52 per cent [of the total]; last year it was 43 per cent, and it's declining at about a percentage point a year.

"And that's because we are a largely service economy, and we're able to sell to areas well beyond out geographically boundaries."

At the same time, however, he agreed that the same technological advances and job market shifts that made location less important were also helping to alienate large swathes of the population, who felt left behind and vulnerable to global events. This was fuelling support for populist and extreme politics and the same sentiment that gave "Leave" voters the majority in the UK.

"I think there is a feeling of insecurity among a lot of voters," Mr Fox said.

"They face a world where unavoidably risk in one part of the world spreads to the rest.

"Whether that was the effects of 9/11 - which was a terrorist event - or SAARS - which was a naturally occurring one - or the financial crash in 2008, people can see they don't have the insulation from the wider events in the world that they use to have."